Deep South: Four Seasons on Back Roads

This is Sunday Times Top Ten Bestseller. Acclaimed and beloved travel writer Paul Theroux turns his attention to his own country - America - for the first time in Deep South. For the past fifty years, Paul Theroux has travelled to the far corners of the earth - to China, India, Africa, the Pacific Islands, South America, Russia, and elsewhere - and brought them to life in his cool, exacting prose. In Deep South he turns his gaze to a region much closer to his home. Travelling through North and South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama and Arkansas, Paul Theroux writes of the stunning landscapes he discovers - the deserts, the mountains, the Mississippi - and above all, the lives of the people he meets. The South is a place of contradictions. There is the warm, open spirit of the soul food cafes, found in every town, no matter how small. There is the ruined grandeur of numberless ghostly towns, long abandoned by the industries that built them. There are the state gun shows and the close-knit, subtly forlorn tribe of people who attend and run them. Deep in the heart of his native country, Theroux discovers a land more profoundly foreign than anything he has previously experienced.

Product Information

Awards

Shortlisted for Stanford Dolman Travel Book of the Year 2016.

Reviews

His ability to sum up a people or a city in a few lines is undiminished Daily Telegraph Theroux's work remains the standard by which other travel writing must be judged Observer The world's most perceptive travel writer Daily Mail [Theroux] has the power to transport us and get under the skin of a place... the stories in Deep South make for a compelling listen -- Duncan Minshull, BBC Radio 4 This engrossing book reminds us that despite the poverty, maybe because of it, everyone has a story to tell and it's the writer's job to bear such testimony Financial Times

Author description

Paul Theroux was born in Medford, Massachusetts in 1941. He has written many works of fiction and travel writing, including The Last Train to Zona Verde, Dark Star Safari, Ghost Train to the Eastern Star, Riding the Iron Rooster, The Great Railway Bazaar, The Elephanta Suite, A Dead Hand, The Tao of Travel and The Lower River. The Mosquito Coast and Dr Slaughter have both been made into successful films. Paul Theroux divides his time between Cape Cod and the Hawaiian islands. His most recent work is Deep South, which is published by Hamish Hamilton.